I mentioned last week that I was in the process of setting up about five K-2nd grade classes with their chromebooks.  These chromebooks have touch screen capabilities and the school felt it would be a great addition for the younger students.  This past Thursday I had the pleasure of deploying these into a 2nd grade classroom so that the students could use them during a Google Hangout.

What I found to be interesting was the capacity that young children have to transfer their knowledge into different areas or when using new technology.  The point of giving out the touch screen chromebooks for this particular Google Hangout was that it was a "Where in the world are we" activity in which the two participating classrooms guess where in the world the other is.  The benefit of using the chromebooks was that the students were able to open the slides document I created and with the use of an extension that was downloaded, they were able to mark on the screen without effecting the document.  After narrowing down a one of the many maps, they easily cleared all their markings and went on to the next map.

I gave very minimal instruction on the use of the chromebooks and right away all students started digging in.  It was awesome hearing them collaborate with each other and help each other without having to ask.  When one figured out how to change the color of the pen to mark the screen they quickly traded that information to learn something in return.  Hands on learning is cool!